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spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Dongattack posted:

Were the fronts actually working a profit tho? I'm just thinking about the whole series of scenes where it was revealed that Clay was scamming Stringer all along and i assumed that it was hinted at then that the whole business was operating at a loss and going nowhere. But also now that i think about it it could just be a scene showing Clay Davis being Clay Davis and everything that didn't involve him probably ran a whole lot smoother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn76iJ0DOpI

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Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

If Stringer had thought short-term smalltime he could have made out like a bandit (like Fatface Rick and the like did) by flipping the properties for a big profit, and the money he handed out to the likes of Davis would have been worth it. Instead, he decided to hold onto the properties and develop them himself and become a big time player, which is a good long-term strategy that he unfortunately completely bungled by assuming he could shortcut or game the system like things worked on the street - bribe Davis to grease the wheels to ensure permits/funding came through etc.

If he hadn't thought of himself as the smartest guy in the room (ala McNulty) he would have used Levy as a middle-man and had (some) protection from the predators and it might have worked out. Instead, Davis and Krawcyzk were taking him for huge amounts of money while just leaving everything to run as it would have anyway (you do your paperwork, put in your applications for permits and matching funding, then sit back and hope for the best) and he demonstrated he didn't have the temperament to handle things.

Edit: The parallel is obvious, but look at all the money Frank Sobotka was throwing at lobbyists to get the canal(?) dredged, while everybody told him,"You've bought political support but it only takes you so far, be happy with what you've got and don't push for something impossible!" and then he ended up losing the small gains he did make because he wanted EVERYTHING.

Edit Edit: Hell, they even have a similar thing where the guys he is paying try to mollify Frank by organizing a minor chair position which he can give to his brother (who turns it down) for some extra cash to make it look like they're really working hard for him. Meanwhile, Stringer is paying out all that cash and the best Clay offers him is some minor contract which will get him 20-30k back for the hundreds of thousands he had laid out already.

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 5, 2018

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

The central paradox, highlighted by The Greek telling Sobotka to settle the gently caress down and use the money on something tangible like a nice jacket, is that you cannot actually change the system no matter how much money you burn on it. The money is the system, etc.

Edit: Similarly, even when McNulty has access to dispense all of the resources of the department as he sees fit, he can't actually enact any ongoing fixes to how policing is handled in Baltimore; the system's own moving parts cannot be used to fix it.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
Ziggy's mom was right... He should have gone to the community college. He would have made an excellent unicycle guy.

drjuggalo
Jul 26, 2014
I finished watching the wire about two nights ago and it really moved me on all ends, the write ups are perfect even without the stupidly tiny little weird black cultural callouts of the era that I have no idea how david simon would know (probably doesn't but had cast members help on or some poo poo). I haven't been able to watch anything since and the show is still all in my head. I'm honestly mad at myself for putting it off for as many years as I did and thought it was gonna be lovely from the very fact that a white man was trying to do a show on inner city baltimore. S4 and S2 are probably my favourite seasons

drjuggalo fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Dec 22, 2018

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

drjuggalo posted:

thought it was gonna be lovely from the very fact that a white man was trying to do a show on inner city baltimore.

If you haven't already I really recommend checking out his books Homicide and The Corner. You'll really get a sense of why he was able to write this stuff so well (and to his credit, on the show he mostly brought in writers to cover those areas where his knowledge was limited) plus you'll see a lot of the stuff that would eventually inform or be directly referenced by The Wire.

drjuggalo posted:

S4 and S2 are probably my favourite seasons

:hfive:

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011
S4 and S2 are objectively the best.

I never got that into homicide. Seemed a bit slow and maybe less serialized? Does it take a while to get into it?

Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. I've also been watching The Mechanism on Netflix which is kind of like a Brazilian take on The Wire, seems pretty good so far.

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead!

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Ornithology posted:

Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. I've also been watching The Mechanism on Netflix which is kind of like a Brazilian take on The Wire, seems pretty good so far.

Breaking Bad. It's The Wire's only competition for best tv show ever.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer

Ornithology posted:

Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing.

This is totally true although it’s more foul-mouthed Shakespearean than the realism of The Wire’s writing

Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


The Shield's good too. It will suffer from being That Other Cop Show That's Not As Good As The Wire but I liked it a lot for what it was.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends

Ainsley McTree posted:

Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead!

The first series is great because it's basically the book but without the swearing, and also has the episode 'Three Men And Adena' which is easily up there with the best episodes of The Wire

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
I felt Deadwood was two seasons of building up and then sudden cancellation.

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011
Breaking Bad I watched and is definitely awesome, although a pretty different genre of show than The Wire.

The Shield I thought was pretty good but the writing got kinda unbelievable at times. It's a good show in its own right but nowhere the depth of The Wire IMO. Felt more like an action with police corruption as the focus.

Deadwood I mentioned as I hear it compared often to The Wire, but I actually wasn't a fan of the cryptic dialogue and the fact that it got cancelled definitely puts a damper on things.

For Homicide, do you need to watch them in order or can I just pick up from a certain episode?

Narcos is another similar one to The Wire in that it shows from both criminal and LE perspective, and has some emphasis on the futility of the criminal justice system/war on drugs.

I watched The Corner and it was just amazing, maybe even better than The Wire IMO.

Barry Foster
Dec 24, 2007

What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)
I enjoy Narcos but it's really, really pulpy - not really comparable to The Wire, they're very different things.

Lemon
May 22, 2003

I think Breaking Bad is great, but a little too fantastical to really be compared to The Wire.

What about The Sopranos?

Asbury
Mar 23, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 6 years!
Hair Elf

spog posted:

I felt Deadwood was two seasons of building up and then sudden cancellation.

Sure was. We finally get a movie next year.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire.

deadwood probably has the best dialogue for a tv show ever but yeah it certainly aint realistic.

Barry Foster
Dec 24, 2007

What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Groovelord Neato posted:

i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire.

That's a really good way of describing it, I'm stealing that.

God drat The Wire is so good. Except the serial killer plot

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost

Groovelord Neato posted:

i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire.

Nah... Oberyn Martell only lasts a couple of episodes. Agent Pena is still going into season 3.:cheeky:

Honestly, there's nothing that compares to the Wire imo. Everything falls short in one way or another, characterization, accuracy, social critique...

Unzip and Attack
Mar 3, 2008

USPOL May
Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire

The holy trifecta.

exmachina
Mar 12, 2006

Look Closer
I can't believe that they are making more Deadwood. If you look at what happened in real life, Hearst wins, Bullock and Star sell out, and swearengen dies in a ditch in Chicago

Stare-Out
Mar 11, 2010

Thanks for the spoiler. :(

Addamere
Jan 3, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

deoju posted:

Honestly, there's nothing that compares to the Wire imo. Everything falls short in one way or another, characterization, accuracy, social critique...

I just picked up watching this show because of some people gushing about it in C-SPAM, and I gotta say, it's just TV man.

It has some good moments that make you think - if you want to. Like in season 2, where perennial gently caress-up Ziggy can be interpreted as either an obnoxious character you wish would just go the gently caress away and stop being forced in front of your eyeballs or the stand-in for a generation of kids with no future. If you wanted to, you could examine this constantly failing-upward idiot who eventually snaps and ruins everything for everyone as the product of his situation, and and I'm sure people have written treatises about it. But doing so does not make the author or the show any better for the effort, and the character's greatest contribution to fiction remains having put Baloogan on film.

PriorMarcus
Oct 17, 2008

ASK ME ABOUT BEING ALLERGIC TO POSITIVITY

deoju posted:

Nah... Oberyn Martell only lasts a couple of episodes. Agent Pena is still going into season 3.:cheeky:

Honestly, there's nothing that compares to the Wire imo. Everything falls short in one way or another, characterization, accuracy, social critique...

Mad Men.

drjuggalo
Jul 26, 2014

Jerusalem posted:

If you haven't already I really recommend checking out his books Homicide and The Corner.


ill def pick them both up (after i rewatch the wire) because im still in awe at everything about the show. i also cant stress how much i enjoyed your and escape artist's writeups. I would legit watch a batch of episodes and cut out enough time in my night to catch up on them because i enjoyed it that much


i tried for years to get into 'good' television but its all rear end to me, the sopranos is too racist for my tastes (is it supposed to be like an idealization of mob movies? ), breaking bad bored me for some reason or another, and everything else had too many problems for me to keep engaged. but the wire didnt even feel like a tevlevision show with how god drat dense and unwilling to spell things out to the viewer.


my favourite scene(s) by far is when chris and snoop are talking about bounce music and snoop has no loving idea whats popping only for it to get called back in S5 when snoop and chris were riding around looking for omar with loving huricane chris playing on the stereo

Crumbletron
Jul 21, 2006



IT'S YOUR BOY JESUS, MANE
Homicide is really good but bleak at times. Some of the stories in there can feel unsatisfying because the cases were never solved, but it's really well written. A lot of The Wire's best jokes came straight out of it.

Lemon
May 22, 2003

drjuggalo posted:

i tried for years to get into 'good' television but its all rear end to me, the sopranos is too racist for my tastes (is it supposed to be like an idealization of mob movies? )

D'you mean like the characters being racist, or the show itself? I'd be interested to hear more. As for what it's supposed to be, it's basically a character study of a sociopath.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Ainsley McTree posted:

Homicide the TV show isn't on the level of the wire, no; it suffers from being on a network, so they had to tone it down a little. There's a dramatic scene in which one of the detectives has the audacity to call his captain a butthead!

I think Homicide has higher highs than The Wire, but it does suffer a bit from being restrained by the network, and the fact that they bleed talent like nobody's business makes the last 2 seasons pretty dire.

Hasselblad
Dec 13, 2017

My dumbass opinions are only outweighed by my racism.

No one forgot that I exist to defend violent cops, champion chaining down immigrants, and have trash opinions on cooking.

Ornithology posted:

S4 and S2 are objectively the best.

I never got that into homicide. Seemed a bit slow and maybe less serialized? Does it take a while to get into it?

Any suggestions of non David Simon shows with a similar complexity? I've heard Deadwood is great and has similarly dense writing. I've also been watching The Mechanism on Netflix which is kind of like a Brazilian take on The Wire, seems pretty good so far.

Bosch.

Addamere
Jan 3, 2010

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Groovelord Neato posted:

i enjoy narcos but it's the game of thrones version of the wire.

deadwood probably has the best dialogue for a tv show ever but yeah it certainly aint realistic.

If you like Narcos, then give Queen of the South a shot!

drjuggalo
Jul 26, 2014

Lemon posted:

D'you mean like the characters being racist, or the show itself? I'd be interested to hear more. As for what it's supposed to be, it's basically a character study of a sociopath.

more so in that every single black character is stupid and inept, cant even shoot straight and have as much function as doorstoppers, ive never seen a piece of media that blatant with it to the point where i thought it was satire

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011

drjuggalo posted:

more so in that every single black character is stupid and inept, cant even shoot straight and have as much function as doorstoppers, ive never seen a piece of media that blatant with it to the point where i thought it was satire

I thought you were talking about The Wire for a second and I was really confused.

I can't remember many instances of black people even being in The Sopranos. Maybe some gang members got hired to do a botched hit in one of the early seasons? Can you remind me? A lot of the Italians are definitely depicted as inept too though, I found it added to the realism and also provide some comic relief.

I did like the running gag that whenever Tony murdered one of his own men he'd blame it on some nameless black thugs and no one ever questioned for more detail beyond that.

denzelcurrypower fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Dec 23, 2018

Harold Stassen
Jan 24, 2016
African Americans aren’t really a part of their narrow world- they don’t induct them as members, based on racism and “stick with your own kind” mentality but there are a few instances of savvy black men in the series- the guy who tony goes into the HUD scheme with, Massive Genius from S1, Noah (“Jamaal Ginsburg, the Hasidic Homeboy”) and none of the main characters say the n word (usually “moulignon”, though Richie Aprile says “Nigerian” and if any character would use it remorselessly, I think that’s it).

Characters like Paulie and Bobby Bacala are can’t-shoot-straight made men, every character has a little bit of comic relief to them to show the audience that these guys are below average intelligence- see: constant malapropisms (though possessing above average street smarts) and hey don’t idolize these people

The Sopranos is to black people as the Wire is to the Greek- you could make a whole other show based on the very separate worlds these people inhabit, and so they do. There’s literally enough material to explore an entire series with every set of players which is something the wire does really well from season to season- we’re looking at something different every time. But I do not understand how any thinking person could actively dislike the sopranos. I can see someone hating sopranos and wire because they’re stupid but not liking one and hating the other

drjuggalo
Jul 26, 2014
i guess my gripes with the sopranos also lines up with my gripes of mobster movies. theres just some nagging little thing in my brain that says the show is racist and makes me wanna turn it off after 20 minutes (i got through most of the first season years ago)

denzelcurrypower
Jan 28, 2011
Some of the old school style Italian mobsters in The Sopranos are definitely racist towards black people. But IMO it's presented as a bit of characterization, not an ideology being pushed by the showrunners.

I guess we're getting pretty off topic now. My bad, I started it by asking for other show reccomendations. I'll give Homicide another shot and check out Bosch. The others reccomendations I've already seen, unfortunately.

Harold Stassen
Jan 24, 2016
I am so down to talk sopranos in this thread since the old gbs thread is moribund

Wire related- I was underwhelmed by the carcetti storyline- I thought he was going to be more littlefinger esque in his rapacious grab for power and consolidation of said power

He really does gently caress all

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

COMPAGNIE TOMMY posted:

I am so down to talk sopranos in this thread since the old gbs thread is moribund

Wire related- I was underwhelmed by the carcetti storyline- I thought he was going to be more littlefinger esque in his rapacious grab for power and consolidation of said power

He really does gently caress all

If politicians could change the game they wouldn't exist

drjuggalo
Jul 26, 2014
i liked carcetti, dude was a piece of poo poo who played the system and game but its not his fault he's good at it. my favourite scene of his is when he's at that diner with that old retired mayor who talks about eating poo poo and that just being a simple lawyer who could go home to his family was a fine life while carcetti is actually eating with a huge smile on his face

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Ainsley McTree
Feb 19, 2004


Bodie is in an episode of the sopranos. I think it’s in season one, he fucks up stealing a truck.

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